[JohnnyRidden]

Lol, you should read the cyberpunk novel, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. The United States Navy ends up selling the USS Enterprise due to budget cuts to the books villain. Anyways, I think this is a great idea for Japan to pursue. I'm sure nobody believed in WW2 that the US and Japan would be allies against a communist China...
PS-Does anyone know if the carriers are going to be nuclear powered, or diesel?

[Bobby777]

I'd never heard of it ... I'd have no problem selling them non-nuke carriers ... I have to guess though, that the Japanese would go for a nuke ship, since they seem to like to modify American equipment ... I think they're building a jazzed-up version of the F-16 ...

[Arthalion]

Does anyone know if the carriers are going to be nuclear powered, or diesel?

I would assume nuclear. The Japanese have a nuclear program on par with our own in any area except weapons. They have decades of experience with plutonium reactors, and have reactors running in nearly every large city, so building a diesel navy wouldn't make much sense.

Oh, and I'd assume THAT fact probably scares the Chinese more than the potential for Japanese carriers. The Japanese have, through their space program, developed rocket building and guidance technology nearly as accurate as our own (they could build an ICBM TODAY if they wanted). They have the experience, the technology, and (most importantly) the plutonium to build dozens of nuclear warheads in less than a year.

The ONLY reason the Japanese don't have carriers, long range fighters, and an advanced nuclear weapons program is the fact that they haven't wanted one. Until recently, the Japanese have lived under the illusion that the U.S. would protect them from potentially hostile neighbors, so they remained pacifists and only supported minimal rearmnament. With the increased muscle flexing by the Chinese, North Korean nuclear brinksmanship, and the fact that the U.S. military is getting stretched kind of thin across the globe, the Japanese are starting to realize that we might not be able to protect them against hostile neighbors. If the Japanese are smart as they like to believe they are, they'd scrap their constitution tomorrow and six months from now announce that their newly minted nuclear arsenal is pointed squarely at Pyongyang and Beijing.

[hedgetrimmer]

The book also said that the US economy was going to be based on take out pizza, software and hollywood movies. everything else would be manufactured outside the US.

Strike the software part, add government jobs and you've got a pretty good prediction.